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Tzimisce

Everything in this room belongs to you. Including the people and their bones.

What Are You?

You were Embraced because you understand and aim to experience ownership on a level that makes other people uncomfortable. The Tzimisce recruit from territorial obsessives; landlords, cult leaders, gang bosses, military commanders, hoarders of every stripe. Your sire didn't just want someone ambitious because ambition implies you're still reaching. They wanted someone who takes, keeps, and would sooner burn it all to ash than let a single piece fall into someone else's grubby hands. Many Tzimisce treat the Embrace itself as an act of possession — you are your sire's legacy. Whether that makes you an heir or property depends on the sire.

The Clan's signature is Vicissitude, a specialized form of fleshcrafting that lets you reshape living tissue like wet clay. Your own body or someone else's — skin, bone, muscle, fats, sinew, organs, all of it malleable under your talented fingers. Some Tzimisce sculpt themselves into their definition of flawless. Others go the other direction entirely, crafting forms that are deliberately alien, grotesque, or functional in ways that humanoid anatomy was never meant to be. It's the ultimate expression of the Tzimisce philosophy: if you own something, you can do whatever you want with it. This extends to everything else, too. Land, gangs, businesses, buildings, people; a Tzimisce claims a treasure (or charge) and guards it. The holdings don't need to be pretty or well-maintained, they just need to be yours.

The cost is the tether. You must slumber surrounded by your treasure; your domain, your people, whatever you've claimed as the center of your obsession. Historically, this meant literally bedding down in the soil of your homeland. These nights, it might mean sleeping in your tenement, your clubhouse, or a room full of your collection, and rotating which one you choose every night. Stray too far from that which you own and you wake diminished; your mind frayed, your will eroded. The dragon can never truly leave the hoard.

Disciplines

Choose 2 to start: Animalism | Dominate | Protean

Bane: Dragon's Tether

At character creation, define your treasure: a physical domain or structure, a group of people, an organization, a collection, or something more esoteric but clearly bounded. You must slumber surrounded by your treasure each day. If you rest away from it, take an Ongoing penalty equal to your Blood Potency (minimum 1) to all Resolve rolls until you next rest within your treasure. This penalty is cumulative for consecutive days spent away, up to a maximum of twice your Blood Potency.

Compulsion: Covetousness

When you become aware of something valuable, rare, or desirable to your character in the scene, you feel an overwhelming need to possess it. It could be an object, a piece of territory, a person, or even an intangible thing like someone's loyalty or trust.

Until you establish ownership over it (the Storyteller decides what qualifies), it becomes definitively unattainable, or the scene ends, take an Ongoing penalty equal to your Blood Potency (minimum 1) to all rolls not dedicated to acquiring it.

Clan Perks

You get 2 unique abilities:

Scrupulous Sentinel: When you are within your Haven or with your treasure and acting to defend, maintain, or control it, treat any roll of 6- as a 7-9. You are nearly impossible to dislodge from that which belongs to you. This does not apply elsewhere, even if you bring some of your treasure with you — its resting place (and yours) are what matter.

Sculptor's Claws: You can reshape your own physical features over the course of an uninterrupted scene without rolling: smoothing or texturing skin, reshaping bone structure, recoloring anything, altering height, limb actuation, or build within semi-human proportions. Changes are real and permanent until you reshape them again. When you reveal a deliberately monstrous or alien alteration to intimidate or horrify, roll Influence with Advantage.

Clan Experience

Once each per session, gain +1 XP when you...

  • Expand your treasure by acquiring new territory, people, or resources for your collection
  • Defend your treasure against a threat at personal cost or risk
  • Reshape yourself or another in a way that meaningfully changes how others perceive or interact with them

Archetypes

  • Landlord: This is yours. All of it. The buildings, the people, the rats in the walls. Every last piece.
    • Blood +0 | Shadow +1 | Resolve +2 | Demeanor +1 | Wits -1
  • Sculptor: The human form is a rough draft. You're trying to make the final edits.
    • Blood +1 | Shadow -1 | Resolve +1 | Demeanor +0 | Wits +2
  • Hoarder: You know exactly where every single thing you own is. Nobody is allowed to touch anything.
    • Blood +2 | Shadow +0 | Resolve +1 | Demeanor -1 | Wits +1
  • Custom Archetype: Create your own by distributing these stats: +2 | +1 | +1 | +0 | -1